HOT TOPIC: Changing Financial Regulations

UNITED STATES
Banking and Financial Industry Regulatory Reforms

In the wake of the carnage in the global banking and financial sectors, it’s safe to say that regulatory reforms will be coming – to try to make certain that “this will never happen again.”  The Congress, the Obama White House, new cabinet secretaries, investors, activists, and others will be prescribing regulatory remedies.

In the United States, the traditional and long-separated banking and brokerage industries and more their recent combinations as “financial service organizations” and bank holding companies are sure to be closely watching the proposed statutes and regulatory rulemaking.

Will banking and investment banks again be separate?  Will now un-regulated financial instruments and activities – such as hedge funds or credit swaps and even state-regulated insurance – be regulated by the federal government?  For bankers -- will there be a return to Glass-Steagall types of walls between depository banking and other financial sector activities?  Will there be fewer federal regulatory agencies, or more, and more sweeping regulations (and enforcement) governing now unregulated financial transactions? 

President Barack Obama said (January 8, 2009) that he will propose a “substantial overhaul of the US financial regulatory system, which “needs to be updated to the meet the needs of the 21^st Century.”  What will be the future look of investor protection in these United States?  (By April 30 the US Treasury Department must report to the Congress with recommendations for improving the US financial regulatory structure.)

Stay Tuned -- How will the coming moves affect investors…analysts…asset managers…corporate boards…”C” suite executives…advocates…?  In this Hot Topic section we help you track news, commentary, research and actions taken in the critical areas of financial services reforms in the United States of America.

GLOBAL
Banking and Financial Industry Regulatory Reforms

The movement to reform banking and financial services is not confined to the USA.  Over the past four decades there has been a steady harmonization, or at least collaboration among leading industrial nations in recent years focused on banking, brokerage, financial services, financial instruments, and capital markets mechanisms.

At the end of the Bush Administration, leaders of the “G-20” nations agreed that more cooperation is needed among nations to address the serious problems affecting domestic and global capital markets. 

President Barack Obama agrees and underscored the importance of working with the G-20 leaders in a pre-inaugural speech (January 8, 2009), and will propose his program to overhaul of the United States financial regulatory system before the leaders of the large developed nations and emerging nations leaders meet (the G-20) meet again in April 2009. The G-20 leaders will meet in London to continue work on a coordinated response to the global economic slowdown and will address system risks in the financial system.

Stay Tuned in this Hot Topic section to important developments in the important G-20 global collaboration as proposed new or amended regulations are identified, and be better prepared as this important gathering of sovereign leaders sets out the future of global and domestic regulation of banking, financial services, financial instruments, and addresses other aspects of the global capital markets.